Welcome to SecureDrop’s documentation!¶
SecureDrop is an open-source whistleblower submission system that media organizations can use to securely accept documents from and communicate with anonymous sources.
User Guides¶
- Source Guide
- Journalist Guide
- Updating Your Workstation
- Connecting to the Journalist Interface
- Daily Journalist Alerts About Submissions
- Interacting With Sources
- Moving Documents to the Secure Viewing Station
- Working with Documents
- Moving Documents to Your Everyday Workstation
- Decrypting and Preparing to Publish
- Deleting submissions and source accounts
- Admin Guide
- Passphrase Best Practices
Install SecureDrop¶
- Overview
- Glossary
- Admin Workstation
- Application Server
- Export Device
- Journalist
- Journalist Alert Public Key
- Journalist Interface
- Journalist Workstation
- Landing Page
- Monitor Server
- Onion Service
- OSSEC Alert Public Key
- Secure Viewing Station
- Source
- Source Interface
- Submission Key
- Transfer Device
- Two-Factor Authentication
- Passphrases
- Hardware
- Before You Begin
- Create Tails USBs
- Set Up the Secure Viewing Station
- Set Up the Transfer Device and the Export Device
- Generate the Submission Key
- Set up the Admin Workstation
- Set Up the Network Firewall
- Set Up the Servers
- Install SecureDrop
- Configure the Admin Workstation Post-Install and Create Backups
- Create an Admin Account on the Journalist Interface
- Test the Installation
- Onboard Journalists
Deployment Best Practices¶
- Overview
- Landing Page
- URL and Location
- HTTPS Only (No Mixed Content)
- Perfect Forward Secrecy
- SSL Certificate Recommendations
- Do Not Use Third-Party Analytics, Tracking, or Advertising
- Do Not Hyperlink .onion Addresses
- Avoid Direct Links to SecureDrop.org
- Apply Security Headers
- Additional Apache Configuration
- Further Security Considerations
- How to test your Landing Page using Tor Browser
- Landing Page Content Suggestions
- Minimum requirements for the SecureDrop environment
- Whole Site Changes
- Sample SecureDrop Privacy Policy
Checklists¶
Topic Guides¶
- Promoting Your SecureDrop Instance
- Make a High Profile Announcement
- Provide a Clear Link on Your Homepage
- Provide Links at the Bottom of Your Articles
- Create an Instructional Video on How to Access and Use Your SecureDrop
- Regularly Share Your SecureDrop Landing Page on Social Media
- Target Potential Whistleblowers with Advertising
- Put an Advertisement in Your Physical Paper
- What Makes SecureDrop Unique
- Investigating Logs
- OSSEC Guide
- Setting Up a Printer in Tails
- HTTPS on the Source Interface
- SSH Over Local Network
- SecureDrop On-Site Training Schedule
- Using a YubiKey with the Journalist Interface
- Backing Up and Restoring Servers
- Backing Up and Restoring Workstations
- Updating Tails USBs
- Rebuilding an Admin Workstation USB
- Step 1: Prepare the USB sticks
- Step 2: (Optional) Boot the servers in single-user mode
- Step 3: Set up Admin Workstation access
- Step 4: Retrieve SecureDrop configuration info from the servers
- Step 5: Configure and back up the application
- Step 6: Run the
./securedrop-admin installcommand - Step 7: Post-rebuild tasks
- Troubleshooting Kernel Updates
- Getting Support
- SecureDrop V3 Onion Services
- BIOS Updates on the Servers
- Upgrading workstations from Tails 3 to Tails 4
- Getting Support
- Off-board Administrators and Journalists
- Decommission SecureDrop
Upgrade SecureDrop¶
Developer Documentation¶
- Contributing to SecureDrop
- Setting Up the Development Environment
- Making a PR to SecureDrop
- Development of Securedrop-Admin in the Admin Directory
- Development of SecureDropUpdater in the journalist_gui Directory
- Developing the SecureDrop Client Application
- Journalist Interface API
- Virtual Environments: Servers
- Virtual Environments: Admin Workstation
- Virtual Environments: Using Qubes
- Overview
- Download Ubuntu server ISO
- Create the base VM
- Boot into installation media
- Initial VM configuration
- Clone VMs
- SecureDrop Installation
- Managing Qubes RPC for Admin API capability
- Creating staging instance
- Accessing the Journalist Interface (Staging) in Whonix-based VMs
- Switching between Xenial and Focal
- Upgrade Testing using Molecule
- Contributing Guidelines
- Tips & Tricks
- Database Migrations
- Translations
- Internationalization (i18n)
- Documentation Guidelines
- Testing SecureDrop
- Testing: Application Tests
- Testing: Configuration Tests
- Testing: CI
- SecureDrop apt Repository
- Updating OSSEC Rules
- Generating AppArmor Profiles for Tor and Apache
- Portable SecureDrop Demo
- Release Management
- Build container
- Who can update the build container?
- Updating the build container
Threat Model¶
- Threat Model
- Data Flow Diagram
- Attacks and Countermeasures on the SecureDrop Environment
- Application Code — SecureDrop Repository/Release
- Application Code — Source Interface and Journalist Interface
- Application Server and Monitor Server
- SecureDrop Dependencies — Python, Tor, Linux Kernel, apt, Tails, Ubuntu, or Hardware Firewall Vulnerabilities
- Network Infrastructure — FPF Infrastructure or Organization Corporate Network
- User Behavior and Hardware — SecureDrop Hardware Tampering or Failure in Operational Security
Two versions of this documentation are available:
latest- built from thedevelopbranch of the SecureDrop repository, containing updates that have been tested but not yet released.stable- built from thestablebranch of the SecureDrop repository, and up to date with the most recent release, 1.8.1.